Oxford’s Power Shift forum to show the value of investing in women

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The second annual Power Shift: The Oxford Forum for Women in the World Economy, at Saïd Business School, will show how underrating the contributions of women and girls results in billions of dollars’ worth of missed opportunities, and will explore the positive impacts of considering gender when making investment decisions

Oxford, Oxfordshire (PRWEB UK)1 May 2014

Analysing and making investments with women in mind creates value that traditional markets have been missing. The second annual Power Shift: The Oxford Forum for Women in the World Economy, at Saïd Business School, will show how underrating the contributions of women and girls results in billions of dollars’ worth of missed opportunities, and will explore the positive impacts of considering gender when making investment decisions, particularly when seeking out investments in:

Companies led by women

Companies that promote gender equity

Companies that benefit women through products and services

“For thousands of years, women have been excluded from the money system. It’s not just that their labour is often unpaid, but that laws and custom mean that they are consistently unable to inherit, forbidden to make contracts, to get credit, and to open financial accounts. Even in more ‘enlightened’ economies, it is hard for women to gain access to capital, despite the fact that organisations with women at the helm, or at least with significant numbers of women at the top, outperform those that are male-dominated,” said Professor Linda Scott, Saïd Business School, one of the founders of Power Shift. “This difficult relationship with the world of money is severely limiting women’s potential as economic actors, which is why the Power Shift forum this year is entirely focused on women and finance. A range of leading academics, investors, financial institutions, advisers and entrepreneurs will share their expertise and challenge us to think differently both about women as investors and women as the beneficiaries of investment.”

Melanne Verveer, the former US Ambassador for Global Women’s Issues and founding partner of Seneca Point Global, the global women strategy firm, will deliver the keynote address in the opening plenary session, talking about how the economic empowerment of women is now a key strategy of governments and multilateral agencies worldwide to spur economic development and reduce conflict.

Jeanne M Sullivan, Co-founder, StarVest Partners, New York City, is one of the world’s few female venture capitalists. She will talk about the challenges facing women who want to enter the industry, why women have the potential to excel in this field, and the thrill of helping to build companies for those who make it.

Musimbi Kanyoro is President and CEO of the Global Fund for Women, a public foundation that invests in women-led organisations and courageous women to advance the rights of women and girls worldwide.

Walt Macnee, Vice Chairman MasterCard Worldwide, will set the keynote for the second day by asking, how can a for-profit corporation contribute to a future for women that is more equitable, sustainable and inclusive? What works? What does not? Are there big opportunities for positive change?

Joy Anderson, President, Criterion Institute, and Katherine Collins, Founder & CEO, Honeybee Capital, will run three workshops during Powershift to introduce participants to the Criterion Institute’s “(re)Value Gender” technique. This method is already being used by investors to rethink the impact of gender in financial analysis, and the workshop will use role-play and “thought experiments” to help participants start looking with an entirely new eye on designing and evaluating financial investments with a gender lens. A limited number of places on these workshops have been reserved for journalists. Please contact the Press Office as soon as possible if you would like to attend.

Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford blends the best of new and old. We are a vibrant and innovative business school, but yet deeply embedded in an 800 year old world-class university. We create programmes and ideas that have global impact. We educate people for successful business careers, and as a community seek to tackle world-scale problems. We deliver cutting-edge programmes and ground-breaking research that transform individuals, organisations, business practice, and society. We seek to be a world-class business school community, embedded in a world-class University, tackling world-scale problems.

In the Financial Times European Business School ranking (Dec 2013) Saïd is ranked 12th. It is ranked 13th worldwide in the FT’s combined ranking of Executive Education programmes (May 2013) and 23rd in the world in the FT ranking of MBA programmes (Jan 2014). The MBA is ranked 5th in Businessweek’s full time MBA ranking outside the USA (Nov 2012) and is ranked 5th among the top non-US Business Schools by Forbes magazine (Sep 2013). The Executive MBA is ranked 23rd worldwide in the FT’s ranking of EMBAs (Oct 2013). The Oxford MSc in Financial Economics is ranked 6th in the world in the FT ranking of Masters in Finance programmes (Jun 2013). In the UK university league tables it is ranked first of all UK universities for undergraduate business and management in The Guardian (Jun 2013) and has ranked first in nine of the last ten years in The Times (Sept 2013). For more information, see http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/